Born near Bel Air, MD in 1838, John Wilkes Booth was the son of noted Shakespearian actor Junius Brutus Booth. Well educated, John Wilkes followed his brothers Edwin and Junius Brutus Jr. into the theater. Playing across the country, he became one of the best known actors of the day. An ardent supporter of the South and slavery, Booth decried the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, and was only prevented from joining the Confederate army by a desire to preserve harmony within his family. During the war Booth continued to act and traveled widely to perform for audiences in both the North and South.
In 1864, Union forces ended the exchange of prisoners of war with the goal of reducing the Confederate army and in retribution for the South's unwillingness to exchange African-American prisoners. Seeing an opportunity to make his mark for the Southern cause, Booth began to devise a plot to kidnap President Lincoln. It was his belief that if Lincoln could be carried to Richmond he could be used as a bargaining chip to restart the prisoner exchange. Using his friends Samuel Arnold and Michael O'Laughlin as accomplices, Booth planned to seize the president as he rode the three miles from the White House to his summer residence at the Old Soldiers Home. Throughout the summer and fall, Booth further developed the plan but took no action toward implementing it. In October, he traveled to Montreal for ten days. While there it is possible that he met with agents of the Confederate government in an effort to gain their support for his plan.